And I am sure you would rather be a brown dude in Banglaland than a black dude in Somalia. For people born in the US, the fact that things are worse in the country of their parents or grandparents origin is irrelevent and of no consequence or consolation.

a question i would have is what nation has a better system of race relations than the USA? perhaps canada? the UK? that would give at least a tangible non-abstract target.

Setting a low target, innit? Imagine if the Mercedes engineers replied, ‘But we’re so much better than Hyundai!’

Let’s stay forward-facing.

1) discrimation exists 2) attempting to create the best-of-all-worlds has to take a step back at some point 3) where we draw the line is dependent on values and judgements 4) too many people who think that discrimination is a fundamental and omnipresent fact of non-white/non-male/etc. etc. life forget that other people might have different opinions on where to draw the line based on their own experiences and values

7) also, i am sure discrimination exists. that being said, the discrimination that asians at the NIH go through seems trivial next to what blacks experienced. is this what “equal rights” is now getting reduced to? making sure that a chinese american scientist gets his promotion? if there is discrimination, that sucks, but there is a certain overhead with process that might eventually swamp about the system’s ability to achieve the ends.

That is not what discrimination is reduced to. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that many of the people currently standing on soapboxes around this post are from areas where racism just isn’t that prevalent.

But just because you haven’t seen it in your neighborhood lately don’t mean it ain’t anywhere else. Like radioactive waste, when it’s in your backyard, remediation suddenly becomes bit more urgent and pressing a matter.

There’s no doubt about that, agreed. But, don’t take for granted that there has been a long struggle to get to the point we’ve gotten to. And there is room for improvement. I don’t think anyone said there was a straight line from the numbers to racism; it’s a wait, watch, see, and be weary type of post.

Now as incorrigibly racist as some of you might find the US, we’re positively a sea of racial harmony relative to some of the crap that goes on in large chunks of Latin America. 4th generation folks born & raised in Argentina, for ex., will still introduce themselves as “Italian, from Argentina” or “German, from Argentina.” (it’s a sort of twisted, carried to an extreme version of the “tossed salad” vs. “melting pot” debate going on in the US today). And there is most def. a pecking order between the various “-from-”‘s which spans different countries there.

In any case, this dude had given talks all over the world on different topics and was a pretty expert speaker. One day, while speaking to a bunch of execs in Brazil (a race story in and of itself) he was posed the question -

“How did a Peruvian became CEO of an American Fortune 500 company?”

He paused for a minute and said “you know, in America, I’ve never been asked that question.”

Racism surely exists but I loathe using it as the first explanation for whatever statistical discrepency folks want to highlight….